"You have failed, my love," said Salthor, a Demon Lord in the service of Baal, the dark god of Wrath, despair, and vengeance, calmly. He looked at her through her usurped eyes, and Jasmine felt a shudder run through her to the core of her being.
She backed away, for he was well aware of the punishments her patron could inflict on him when he was displeased. Instinctively, her fingers closed around the ruby hilt of her black warsword. She shook her head and her great mane of white-streaked black hair ruffled. She felt helpless. Even though she had a small army of beastmen at her service, she knew there was nothing they could do to help her. In the presence of her boss, no one could help her, no one. She was glad that the old beastman shaman, Grind, and his acolytes had withdrawn beyond the Altar when she finished the invocation, for she did not wish to have witnesses to her defeat.
"Everyone in the village is dead, as we both decided" she lied, knowing it was useless.
Her black armor was already beginning to tighten around her like a vise, and at the nerve endings she was beginning to feel slight pangs of pain. If the demon so wished, she knew that she would soon find herself submerged in an ocean of agony.
"The girl lives." The beautiful voice of the demon was still expressionless, indifferent, devoid of emotion.
Jasmine tried to avoid looking at her, as she knew the effects her sight would have on her. She knew that she would have already begun to change the body of the scapegoat into a form that more closely resembled her true one.
She looked around her. Overhead, the moon shone in an evil silvery glow. During that night and the next two, the power of darkness would be strong on earth, strong enough to summon the demon patron from her hellish home beyond reality; strong enough for her to possess the body of the man who had been offered to her on that altar deep in the woods.
Through the thick red cloud that surrounded the altar, she could see the campfires of her followers; the flames were blurred by the sweet red mists that tinged the night. They were but tiny stars compared to the bright sun of the demon aura. She heard her move and recognized the leathery rustle of wings emerging from the corpse's back. She focused her attention on the impaled heads surrounding the altar, and the pale countenances of Earl Klein and her son Hugo stared back at her, bringing to mind memories of the night before.
The old earl had behaved like a fighter; he had come out to meet her with a spiked mace, half clad in a mail shirt thrown hastily over his body. He had cursed her, calling her a 'damned hell-whelp of the dark', and Jasmine saw the fear written on her face as the horde of beastmen came rushing through the shattered castle gate behind her. She had almost felt sorry for the stupid mustachioed old man, because she had always liked him. He had been worthy of a warrior's death, and she had given it to him quickly.
The young man was standing behind her father, his face pale with terror, and had turned and run across the blood-soaked courtyard, where her followers were murdering half-sleeping soldiers. She had followed him easily, relentlessly, her black armor fused to his skin to grant him added strength and strength.
The place looked almost identical to the one she remembered. It was dominated by the same enormous bed; the same fine rugs covered the floor; the same deer heads and hunting trophies adorned the walls along with the same banners and weapons. Only Hugo had changed, for the boy with the fine passionate face had become a plump man. His sweat ran down his chubby cheeks, and his face had the look of a baby, even with his eyes crossed with terror. Yes, he had changed. Another might not have recognized him after the time passed, but Jasmine did. She would never forget her eyes, those glassy eyes that had followed her from the moment she entered the castle, more than seven years before.
With one stubby hand she clumsily clutched a longsword, which she raised feebly, and she brushed it aside effortlessly. The weapon spun through the air and landed in the far corner. She then placed the point of her sword against Hugo's chest and pressed lightly, forcing him to back away, until he stumbled at the foot of the bed and lay on the sheets. The smell of excrement filled the air, and the bloated pinkish worm licked her lips.
"You're going to die," she told him.
"Why?" she managed to gasp him.
Then she took off her helmet, and he uttered a loud groan as he finally recognized her face and her characteristic long hair.
"Because seven years ago I told you that you would die, do you remember? Then you started laughing. Why don't you laugh now?"
She pressed a little harder with the point of her sword, and her blood began to form a red flower on the white silk of his shirt, which she held out her hands in a pleading gesture.
For the first time in years, tears of passion welled in Jasmine's eyes, and she felt again the searing wave of anger and hate that raced through her veins, transforming her face into a mask. She thrust the weapon hard as she reveled in the shudder of penetration and the clean slide of hellish metal through flesh. She leaned over and pinned him to the bed he had forced her onto seven years before, and once again her sheets were stained with blood.
She had surprised herself. After long years of planning so many slow, deliberate, delicious tortures, she had dispatched him in one fell swoop. Somehow, revenge seemed less important. She had turned and left the bedroom to supervise the sacking of the town. She had ignored the pleas of the two men whom the beasts were putting on the gallows as they recounted one of her incomprehensibly ghoulish jokes. She had been down there, in the town, where she had met the girl. At that moment, he was fighting to forget her.
"You should not have spared the girl's life, my love." The demon allowed a trace of anger to creep into her voice, the promise of eternities of pain reinforced with each word spoken.
"I did not spare the girl's life; I left her for the beasts. It is not my responsibility to kill every sad urchin in a village."
Then she lashed out at her with a lash of words from the demon.
"Don't lie, my love. You spared his life because you're too soft. For an instant you allowed mere human weakness to stay your hand and turn you from your chosen path. I can't allow that, and neither can you, because if you change course now you will have lost everything. Believe me, if you let the girl continue to live, you will have reason to regret it."
At that moment, Ella Jasmine looked up at the demon and, as always, was struck by the polished chitinous beauty of the being. She saw her black armored form, her brutally beautiful face looking up at her from beneath her rune-engraved helmet, and looking into her glowing red eyes she sensed her strength. He was a being who knew neither weakness nor compassion; he was perfect. One day, she could be like this. She pushed the thought from her mind and smiled with apparent pleasure.
"You understand, my love; you know the nature of our pact. The path of the Demonic Knight is nothing more than a test. Follow her to the end and you will find power and immortality. Deviate from the path and you will only find eternal damnation. The Great Baal rewards the strong, but hates the weak. The battles we fight, the wars we wage, are but tests, crucibles meant to consume our weakness and refine our strength. You must be strong, my love."
She nodded, mesmerized by the beauty of that liquid voice and seduced by the promise to know neither pain nor weakness, to be perfect, to allow no chink in her armor to penetrate the horror of the world. The demon reached out a clawed hand, and she touched it.
"An age of destruction and darkness is coming, a time of terror and. Very soon, the armies of the seven Great Powers will advance from the poles, and the fate of this world will be decided by steel and sorcery. The winning side will remain in possession of this world, my beloved, which will be the eternal domain of the victors. This planet will be cleansed of filthy humanity, as we will have to reshape everything in our image. You can be on the winning side, my love, be one of their privileged champions. All you have to do is be strong and consecrate your strength to our Lord. Do you want that?"
In that moment, as she gazed into the creature's burning eyes and heard the silky persuasive quality of her voice, she felt she had no doubt.
"Do you want to join us, my love?"
"Yes," she gasped. "Yes."
"In that case, the girl must die."